Mallandaine Edward

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One of the first architects to practice in British Columbia, Mallandaine was also the first publisher of a city directory in 1860, and the publisher of a provincial directory in 1887. As such, he was one of the first commercial publishers in B.C. Subsequent volumes of Mallandaine's city directory were produced in 1868, 1869, 1871 and 1874. With R.T. Williams he published the 308-page British Columbia Directory from Victoria in 1887.

Born in Singapore in 1827, he went to live in France with his father in 1836 after his mother had died in 1832. After schooling in Brittany, he was apprenticed to learn bookkeeping in London. He was later admitted as a student to the Royal Institute of British Architects. He tried seeking gold in Australia in 1852 and 1853 without much success, returning to London in 1854. He married Mary Smith in 1855 but was soon devastated by the death of his wife and their baby girl. He left for another gold rush, this one in British Columbia, reaching Victoria via Panama and San Francisco in 1858. He served as headmaster for a private school from 1858, purchasing the school from Julius Silversmith in 1860. He was finally able to gain a contract designing and building a fence for Victoria's Jewish cemetery but his attempts to open an architectural business failed to advance. He tried his luck during the Leech River Gold Rush near Sooke, to no avail, and went to Portland in 1866 to look for architecture work, with limited success. He married Louisa Townsend in 1866, surveyed parts of the Fraser Canyon in 1871 and devised the layout for the Ross Bay Cemetery in 1872. He designed Nanaimo's first public school and a church in Metchosin before seeking his fortune for a fourth time in a gold rush, this one in the Cassiar District in 1875. In the 1880s he was more successful as an architect on Vancouver Island, designing houses, churches, cemeteries and the surviving London Block offices on Broad Street in Victoria. He continued working as an architect until his death on April 4, 1905. One of his five children, Edward Jr., became an architect in Victoria and Creston, B.C.